


And All Shall Be Well

by musicforwolves



Category: Were the World Mine (2008)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 17:17:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicforwolves/pseuds/musicforwolves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the lovers are righted at the end of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', the line is "Jack shall have Jill, nought shall go ill". When your boyfriend is Jack, though, it's pretty bad news if he winds up with Jill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And All Shall Be Well

**Author's Note:**

  * For [musikurt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musikurt/gifts).



"I'm surprised you're going back to Shakespeare after everything that happened," Jonathon said. He stopped to take a mouthful of water, and poured the rest of the bottle over his head for good measure.

"Well, I thought it would be fun," Timothy responded, trying not to be too distracted by his suddenly-damp boyfriend. Exercise was nice and all, but if he was honest he only brought his bike out when Jonathon went running because half the time Jonathon wound up shirtless. It was late autumn now, so the shirtlessness was getting rarer. This was much better, anyway.

Jonathon shook the last few drops out of his hair. "So who did they get you to read for?"

"Antonio."

"Huh," Jonathon said. There was a long pause. "And Antonio is...?"

"A pirate. According to the director, he's in love with his best friend."

Jonathon smiled and nodded, and started running again, with Timothy easily keeping pace. For a while, they were both silent, until Jonathon, with a suddenly troubled expression, asked "Who's playing the best friend?"

Ah. Should've expected this. "He hasn't been cast yet. The role of Sebastian is still wide open."

"Just checking. If my boyfriend is making out with anyone besides me, I'd like to know about it."

That sentence sparked some realisation in Timothy, and it must have shown on his face, because Jonathon took one look at him and said "No. Absolutely not. I'm not going to be in another play ever, ever again."

"Oh, come on," Timothy said, circling his bike in lazy circles around Jonathon. "Why not?"

"Because nothing that involves Shakespeare - and you - ever goes smoothly," Jonathon said. "You can't make me."

 

 ***

 

"You've got a good grasp of the cadence of the lines," Mr. O'Strate said when Jonathon had finished his audition read-through. "Just remember, Sebastian has come here entirely by chance, and he's immediately accosted by this girl who says she's in love with him. You've had your feet knocked out from under you, and you're taking stock of the only things you can be sure of. Give it another go through."

As Jonathon started into the speech again, he could dimly hear the conversation Timothy was having with some of the other auditionees outside the room. He got on so well with these people that it almost made Jonathon jealous. He wasn't as comfortable with any of this; with being out of his small town for the first time, with being out of the closet... he still felt a surge of adrenaline whenever Timothy held his hand while they walked between lecture halls, as though he needed to defend himself. Timothy had taken to it like he'd been waiting for this experience forever, and keeping that desire barely contained all the way through high school.

 

 ***

 

Outisde, Timothy was doing his best to be involved with the conversation, but he kept drifting off and listening to the echo of Jonathon's voice. He could only catch a few words, but those words - 'madness' and now 'soul' and 'flood' - were uttered in such a calm and matter-of-fact tone that Timothy wondered why Jonathon had been so opposed to the idea of rehearsing.

"He's really good," a girl named Katie said, listening too. "He's making me nervous."

"Which part do you want?" Timothy asked.

"Any of them are good," she said, gently folding the corner of her copy of the play back and forth. "I'd like to play Maria. She's strong."

"Aren't all the female parts in this play strong characters?" Timothy asked, tuning back briefly into Jonathon's monologue. Smooth. Discreet. Stable bearing.

"Yeah, I guess they are. But Maria. She's fun to read. She doesn't put up with any bullshit. How about you? Who are you going for?"

"They got me to read on Wednesday for Antonio. I'm not really after a big part. Too much other stuff to do."

Katie stopped folding her cover for a moment. "Wednesday? Then why are you back? Second reading?"

Timothy pointed into the rehearsal room at Jonathon, who was now being led in a rather vigorous breathing exercise. "My boyfriend's auditioning."

“Oh, he's in for sure,” Katie said.

“How can you tell?”

“I've worked with Phil all year,” Katie said, gesturing at O'Strate. “He gets really excited when he's auditioning someone who knows what they're doing.”

Timothy gazed at Jonathon, and wondered why exactly he had been so reluctant to audition. He was doing great, wasn't he?

 

***

 

Timothy could never really get used to learning lines. The ability to memorise them always snuck up on him: he could spend five hours forgetting the words the instant they left his mouth, and then he could nail down an entire scene in twenty minutes. Sitting in the back of his English lecture, with the professor explaining the finer points of peripeteia, Timothy felt a sudden surge of mental energy. He snuck out as gracefully as he could, and wandered to the student union coffee shop, pulling his jacket closer around him.

Over a macchiato, he pulled the script from his satchel and started to browse through it, stopping when he came to the first page of highlighted lines. Antonio was pleading with Sebastian to stay close, where Antonio might be able to protect him. As Timothy dug into the first line, “Will you stay no longer?” he heard a familiar deep voice from the other side of the cafe. He glanced up, and saw Jonathon and Katie together, laughing. They both had their scripts out as well, Jonathon's scruffy copy open towards the end of the play and Katie's closed in her hands. Timothy felt an odd surge of jealousy come over him. Katie's hands caught his attention – she was once again folding the corner of the cover back and forth, like some nervous mechanism that she couldn't control. What was making her nervous? Timothy wondered. Was she into Jonathon? Why was she looking so closely at Jonathon as he spoke, her gaze centred on the lips that had kissed Timothy so many times?

Jonathon, in turn, was staring back at Katie as she spoke. Timothy had been pleased for Katie when he heard that she had got the role of Olivia – she was a friendly and effervescent person, and she didn't seem to mind that the role was not the one she had tried out for. Maybe she was too friendly, Timothy thought, as Katie laughed again. Then he remembered the way Becky and Jonathon had been with each other, when they were dating at Morgan Hill; the friendliness, the private jokes. He got up and grabbed his satchel, walking past their table as he left. Neither of them noticed him.

 

***

 

Katie and Jonathon seemed to get along even better during rehearsals. There was a very real passion between them, Timothy noted, especially when their characters met in the fourth act and instantly fell for each other.

One night, visiting Jonathon's dormroom, he crawled into bed and interlaced his fingers with Jonathon's. “Hey,” he whispered. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Jonathon said, rolling over and kissing him once, softly. “Shoot.”

“Do you miss having a girlfriend?”

Jonathon shot him a confused look, a little guarded. “What? No, not really. I have you.”

“Not really?” Timothy could feel Jonathon's pulse, hot and fast, between his fingers.

“Well, I mean, I'm not really used to all this stuff, Tim. It makes me nervous.” Jonathon swallowed. “If you were a girl, then maybe things would be easier, sure. It'd be easier to hold your hand or kiss you in public.”

Do you want to do that with Katie? Timothy almost asked, but quenched those words before he said them.

“Why?” Jonathon's eyes were sparks of light in the dim room. A few flakes of snow fell outside.

“Just wondering.” Timothy paused, wanting to change the subject, but couldn't. Before he found himself saying something stupid, he felt Jonathon's lips against his neck, and something rather insistent being gently thrust against his hip, so he decided saying stupid things could wait.

 

 ***

 

The holiday break was a welcome change from the discomfort Timothy was feeling. He got to go back home where he and his mother could mutually tolerate each other, and Jonathon was there as well. For a week or so, it was like having his old boyfriend back, as though Jonathon had fallen under that same spell from the year before, where they had sat on the edge of the carnival and whispered to each other while all hell had broken loose around them.

The moment they got back, though, they were into rehearsals again, and often Timothy would find himself up late at night while he made half-hearted attempts to write an essay, and Jonathon and Katie would run lines and discuss characterisation at a diner in the city. It occurred to Timothy that Jonathon seemed to be enjoying the play more than he was. One year into a degree, and already the idea of being a great actor was starting to fade before him.

Finally, the sensation of having his boyfriend dragged away from him as well became more than Timothy could bear. He asked Katie at rehearsal whether they could get a drink afterwards. When she smiled and said “Of course” Timothy felt a single, obligatory stab of guilt.

The coffee hadn't even arrived when Timothy said, all in a rush, “I'd really like you to stop hitting on Jonathon. It makes me uncomfortable, and I think he's falling in love with you, so please. Stop it.”

Katie stared at him, silently, for a very long time. Their number was called, and Katie walked up to the counter, got their drinks, and returned. Her manner was a little different now. Rather than gazing in a mute shock, she was regarding Timothy with a cooler, more quizzical expression. “Start again,” she said.

Timothy did, from the beginning. The way she had been looking at Jonathon during his audition. The meeting in the coffee bar, where they had laughed a lot. The little things; all the slight pets and smiles during rehearsals. The rehearsals for the kiss, first in act four, and again in act five. The way Jonathon looked at her after each of those kisses. As Timothy talked, he noticed that Katie was watching him very closely, her eyes fixed on his mouth, the same way she had been watching Jonathon for months. “You're staring at me,” he said.

Katie shook her head slightly. “You're right. I do that. Sorry. I find it hard to follow people sometimes.”

“You keep looking at Jonathon like that, too.”

“He talks really quickly around me,” Katie said. “I've only got hearing in my right ear, so I have to watch him when he talks to keep up.” She took a sip of her coffee, and then licked a drop of cream off the spoon. “You talk really quickly, too,” she noted.

“So... you're not interested in him?” Timothy asked, nervously.

Katie smiled. “Well, he is cute. But I hear he's dating some guy. Which means: one, he's off the market, and two, he's probably gay, like pretty much every other guy in the theatre department.” She picked up the piece of gingerbread on the saucer, thought for a second, then handed it to Timothy. “I should know; I'm dating pretty much the only straight guy in the place.”

“You are?” Timothy asked, and instantly tried to make himself invisible. “Oh. I'm an idiot, then?”

“You're a teenage guy,” Katie said. “Most teenage guys are.” She finished her coffee. “Want another one?” she asked.

“Sounds great.”

“One question, then. Why would you immediately assume that your boyfriend, the guy who won't shut up about you, is going to be swept off his feet by someone with lady-parts?”

Katie went to order, and when she came back, Timothy told her the whole story of how he and Jonathon had met. Katie listened to the whole tale, enjoying herself immensely. What was strange was that she appeared to take Timothy at his word the whole way through. She didn't declare anything impossible, or even bat an eyelid when Timothy started talking about how Max and Jonathon had become Demetrius and Lysander, fighting in the woods. When he had finally finished the story, she sat there for a few moments with a loopy grin on her face and then said “Flora Tebbit, huh? I didn't know you'd studied under her.”

“She's well known?”

“She and O'Strate were in the same class at Oberlin,” Katie said. “They have similar styles.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “I should really tell you about his production of 'The Tempest' sometime.”

 

***

 

Later that night, after Timothy had awkwardly recounted the evening to Jonathon, Jonathon asked “What the hell is wrong with you? You thought I'd jump Katie because she was nice?”

“I... I didn't...” Timothy began.

“You're lucky you're so fucking adorable,” Jonathon said, shaking his head. “She's nice, and she's helped me figure out how to be okay with who I am. What's so bad about that?”

“In the play,” Timothy finally muttered, “Sebastian ditches Antonio and marries Olivia. I was worried about... I don't know, about life imitating art again.”

Jonathon tilted his head one way, studying Timothy, and then back the other way. “It didn't imitate art last time, either,” he said. “Remember? Lysander is meant to end up with Hermia, not Puck.” He came over and sat down on the bed next to Timothy. “Listen, we're not some play, some story. We're not written yet. It's not the aim of some guy who's been dead for four hundred years to split us up.”

Timothy was about to say something in response to that, but Jonathon kissed him, and kissed him again, and everything outside the room seemed somehow less important. Maybe Timothy hadn't been born great. His fingers trailed along the collar of Jonathon's rugby jersey. Maybe he wasn't ever going to achieve greatness. But he thought, fleetingly, back to what Katie had said about Jonathon the first time she heard him speak, and realised that right now, greatness was thrusting against him. That, for the time being, was a perfectly good ending.

 


End file.
